What traits and skills do you think the best PMMs have?

You can switch from right brain to left brain activities and fire both at the same time. You have to be analytical and strategic, you like art and science, numbers and words. You have to be able to go 1 level deeper than marketers to understand the technology, make sense of it then explain it in a clear manner that is well positioned for your customer’s pain. You are a storyteller.

Example:

1. You can go deep in research and analysis to create charts and define your TAM, SAM, ICP, persona and competitors. Then you can take the data, glean insights and turn it into an actionable plan to create and deliver a first meeting deck that is clearly positioned, messaged and inspires people to open their wallets and stakeholders to ask for more.
2. Then you can deliver the pitch in a few sentences and also in one sentence on the spot. Your words bring ultimate clarity and value.
3. Since you have clarity in the value you are delivering you can help price and package a product to drive revenue into the millions and billions.
4. Last, you can take the message and positioning to direct or create content to amplify it in different forms: a keynote, webinar, podcast, event, PR, blog, website, video, any social channel, email, case study, analyst meeting etc…

If this is you, please ping me, I’d love to work with you. If you have some skills but not all, and want to be a full stack PMM, please ping me, I’d love to mentor you.

The skills I look for in a PMM are: 

- Messaging / Positioning: Ability to create compelling messaging that articulates how the products value propositions solve customer pain points. Examples of how messaging and positioning has been leveraged to tell stories that resonate with the core audience. 

- Project management / Prioritization: Sitting at the cross section of multiple other orgs (Sales, Marketing, Product) there are often many balls in the air - the ability to prioritize, manage stakeholder expectations and drive project deliverables and timelines is a must. 

- Cross-functional skills: I look for PMMs that have solid examples of working with multiple teams within an organization, and I look for examples for how they have handled hard situations, how they've had to push back on requests, how they've had to claim a seat at the table. 

- Empathy: I believe as a PMM, one of our key responsibilities is to represent the voice of the customer internally. Therefore we should always be putting ourselves in the customers shoes. We should advocate for what is best for the customer - and their experience with our products.

These are just a few. There are many soft skills that are equally as important, and generally apply to most roles that I won't go into detail here - but are weighted just as heavily for me. :)